1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of micromachined glass components and methods of manufacture of the same.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In addition to consumer glass products, glass-blowing is often used to create confinement chambers for different types of gases. A normal glass-blowing process is (roughly) as follows:                Heat the glass to its softening point        Remove glass from the heat source (e.g. flame)        Immediately apply pressure (blowing) to shape the glass        Repeat all steps if needed        
In the past, micro-spheres have been fabricated using polymer droplets that are allowed to fall through a high column whose temperature profile is controlled by independent heating units, allowing for expansion of the spheres. See R. Cook, “Creating Microsphere Targets for Inertial Confinement Fusion Experiments”, Energy & Technology Review, pp. 1-9, April 1995; and R. Dagani, “Microspheres Play Role in Medical, Sensor, Energy, Space Technologies”, Chemical and Engineering News, pp. 33-35, December 1994
However, all of these prior efforts have dealt with the fabrication of spheres that are not attached to any surface and can only be filled with specific gases during the fabrication process. Small confinement chambers can be achieved by etching (using dry or wet etchant) glass, silicon, or other materials. However, etching usually leads to rough surfaces as well as very thick sidewalls making it unfit for many applications (e.g. when optics need to be integrated with the chamber). Furthermore, it is not possible to achieve a spherical shape with traditional etching techniques. Large-scale confinement chambers have been created in the past using traditional glass-blowing techniques. However, conventional glass-blowing can only be used to create large components (not micro-fabrication compatible).
What is need is a method and apparatus where glass-blowing is performed in a parallel batch process on a microscopic level.